Posted
by
jamie
on Thursday May 17, 2001 @09:30AM
from the that-was-a-joke-Your-Honor dept.

Keith Henson
was arraigned on charges of "misdemeanor terrorism" last
September. Last month the jury deadlocked on those charges,
but convicted him of making threats to interfere with the
constitutional privilege of enjoying religious freedom. He was
not present at his sentencing hearing yesterday and is a fugitive from
justice, apparently planning to
claim asylum in Canada.
If you've ever flamed anyone in an online forum, and think you
have a right to carry a picket sign, you need to
study this miscarriage of justice. Details below.
Update by J:
freehenson.tripod.com has been taken down, so I'm linking to a mirror.

"Religious bigotry will not be tolerated in Riverside County," was a Scientology spokesperson's
reaction
to the verdict.

That's basically the problem right there. The First
Amendment gives me the right to be a bigot as long as I don't
hurt or threaten anyone. You don't have to like my opinions,
but you do have to tolerate them.

If you've ever hung out in an online forum, you'll probably
get deja vu reading
this Usenet thread.
The first message posted is a description of cruising past
some Scientology related buildings, complete with GPS
coordinates for whatever reason. It's written as a
self-mocking, satirical sendup of spy movies. The remainder of
the thread is jokes in the same vein.

As I read the recently-passed law, if you go along with
the jokes about the "handheld laser guidance system," you
might be a terrorist:

Any person who knowingly threatens to use a weapon of mass
destruction [including] by means of an electronic communication
device, is to be taken as a threat, even if there is no intent
of actually carrying it out ...

The fact that the person who allegedly violated this section
did not actually possess a biological agent, toxin, or
chemical weapon does not constitute a defense to the crime
specified in this section.

The victim of said terrorism must have been in "sustained
fear" of the threat being carried out. And how does the law
know your victim was in sustained fear? Because he or she
evacuated the building -- or took "any other action."

Here's what Henson says. In this case, the Scientology
organization's legal team managed to bar any evidence from
being presented about why Henson was picketing the Scientology
location (because of
two
unusual
deaths
within a month).

Nor was the context of the above thread, or context of
Henson's other Usenet posts, allowed to be introduced. For
example, the jury could not see the context of the above
thread; they only saw Henson's
contribution
to the running gag:

Modern weapons are accurate to a matter of a few tens of yards.
The terminal guidence ones are good to single digits.

Of the
next quote,
the jury was only allowed to see the first sentence, not the second:

The only way I can get clear of this scientology mess is to
"destroy them utterly." So: This week I will be back
picketing gold base.

And you can decide what you think his
third quote
means, but again you have the advantage of its context being just
a click away:

PPS Killing the organization off entirely is the best way
to change the future of Scientology.

Worse still, according to Henson's at-the-time lawyer,
whether these statements caused fear in some Scientologists
was decided not by the statements he actually made, but by
hearsay versions they got from others. He
points out
that Scientology's censorware package
("Scienositter")
would have blocked the original Usenet posts anyway:

...cult members, who are not allowed access to the Internet
and are actively prevented (by the Church of Scientology "net
nanny") from reading the newsgroups on which Henson posts, may
have an unreasonable and irrational fear based on unreasonable
and out of context statements of which they were informed
selectively, but which they did not read.

So picture Keith Henson's situation. He feels strongly
about his particular cause. He peacefully carries a picket sign.
He exercises his First Amendment right to post on Usenet about
what he's doing and why -- and in so doing he uses sentences
and phrases which, in context, clearly are not threats, but out of context could be construed that way.

Dragged into court, all context is stripped away and --
while he narrowly escapes conviction as a domestic terrorist
-- he is convicted of using the
threat of force
against people who may never have actually read what he wrote.

If you're smart, you'll take Henson's case as a warning.
You'll think about what your own statements would look like,
with their context totally removed, and in the harsh spotlight
of a courtroom. Do you really need to post that joke, or wouldn't
the judge find it funny?

You'll soften up your opinions just a little,
trying not to change what you mean while trying to change what
you could be twisted to mean.

Maybe it's not such a great loss for you or me; we're not
great writers anyway, and if we censor ourselves before hitting
Save, maybe that's not the end of the world. We weren't really
going to use that First Amendment right anyway, you know?